2012 – The Uyghur Human Rights Year in Review

January 11, 2013 | Huffpost | By Henryk Szadziewski

As people across the globe shared their hopes and dreams for 2013 with families and friends at the turn of the New Year, reports that Uyghur writer Nurmemet Yasin had died in Shaya prison ‘sometime in 2011’ were still unconfirmed. The confusion surrounding Nurmemet Yasin’s condition serves as a damning indictment not only on the treatment of Uyghur political prisoners by the Chinese authorities, but also on the lack of information made available on them to the outside world. Secrecy is so pervasive in the Chinese penal system that even when a Uyghur serves their sentence, as was the case in 2012 with website administrator Nureli Obul, it remains unknown if they were actually released.

The reason Nurmemet Yasin is in prison in the first place is no mystery if you are acquainted with Chinese government attitudes to Uyghur freedom of expression. The 37-year-old author was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2005 for penning an allegory of the Uyghur people’s yearning for freedom entitled Wild Pigeon. The harsh sentencing shocked many at the time, but it now looks like the standard for Uyghur writers, such as Gheyret Niyaz and Gulmire Imin, who upset the authorities.

Read the full op-ed here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2012-the-uyghur-human-rig_b_2442628